Universal means it will run natively on both the PPC and Intel Macs. With Abobe till the next version, it will run on the Intel Mac but under Emulation under Rosetta. What that means is it will be slower but still work fine. It all depends on what you do whether it will bother you or not. If you do not own ÇS2, I would wait on purchasing it till next year when CS3 comes out so you will not have to buy that EXPENSIVE Suite twice!! They say sometime next year. It really bugs me to no end that CS2 users will never have a patch to make it run or an upgrade but will have to buy CS3 for full price.

If you already have CS2, it will work, just not as fast as it would if it were a Universal Application.

i believe adobe is sticking with their original release patterns and not releasing a universal binary until their next version of the adobe suite (cs3 maybe?), and if my memory serves me correctly that will be mid '07

I have read here that Adobe CS is not "Universal?" What exactly does that mean, and will I be able to use it on my new Intel iMac?

it will work, but you'll get about 50% sped decrease. imagine you have 1.25 G4 mini and you'll get over it

adobe promises to deliver native (universal) version by the end of the year.

I can understand what adobe is thinking, all pros use workstations, CS is for pros, so far G5 is the only apple workstation. most of the people who run CS on iMac, mini or iBook have pirated copies so adobe says: "screw them until pros get their intel workstations"

It really bugs me to no end that CS2 users will never have a patch to make it run or an upgrade but will have to buy CS3 for full price.

While I agree with you that it would be nice to get CS2 Universal (at least at some point) so it can run natively on the Intel-based Macs, you won't need to pay full price for CS3 if you own CS2. It's an upgrade purchase in that case.

adobe promises to deliver native (universal) version by the end of the year.

Promises? Where did you read this?

As far as promises go, Adobe has publicly committed to supporting Apple's new Intel-based Macs. No promise on any date has been given. In fact, Adobe have stated that customers will have to wait until the next major product release to get Universal support. With respect to timeline, although Adobe has a corporate policy of not commenting on future ship dates, they generally have a major upgrade every 18-24 months. Keeping in mind that Photoshop CS2 was released in April of 2005, this should give you a rough guidline for transition purposes.

At our design agency we read all the blurb on the internet about Rosetta apps because we needed a new IMac. We were undecided whether to buy a G5 or an Intel since we'd read that Adobe programs sucked under Rosetta 1 minute to startup, slower than a G4 etc.

We plumped for the Intel and I can tell you all the scaremongering is baloney. Photoshop and Illustrator are fast. Not lightning but still speedy. They take about 20 secs to startup and then there's no noticable slowdown when using them. QuarkXPress tales a little longer to start, about 40 secs, but after that you're away.

As one example, in a test against a 733Mhz G4, enlarging images from 72 to 300 dpi and enlarging by 1500% took about 15 sec on the 2gig Intel and about 1min 30 on the G4. I don't how the G5 would compare, but we use all the usual creative apps in a professional environment. The Intel under Rosetta is superb.

As one example, in a test against a 733Mhz G4, enlarging images from 72 to 300 dpi and enlarging by 1500% took about 15 sec on the 2gig Intel and about 1min 30 on the G4. I don't how the G5 would compare, but we use all the usual creative apps in a professional environment. The Intel under Rosetta is superb.

That's not a very fair comparison to say the least. You'd get a better idea from 1.5Ghz G4 or a 1.8Ghz G5. Even that would be lopsided as the iMac is a CorDuo. Maybe something like lil's rig would give you a good comparison.